The Company
It seems like a really good company to work for. They seem to care about their employees and what they think rather than just pushing them to get stuff done. They’re more than just a web dev company, but I’ve only interacted with the web dev side of things. The rest of the work they do is pretty cool (marketing related). It’s just not where my area of “expertise” is, so I don’t have any interaction with it.

The People
The people that I’ve met so far are pretty cool … dare I saw awesome. Some are crazy … but in a good way. They’re all friendly and seem to have accepted me. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t feel like a complete outcast … well maybe sometimes. But that’s because of my own feelings of self doubt and stuff.

And thanks to this job, I actually know people IRL that I follow on Twitter. Some I’ve interacted with (@AmazonGrace, @fargoirish, @lemur, @krondek, @copaland), and others I’ve just seen around the office (@istafish, @lala_k). I’d love to hang out with them outside of work some time … as long as I was welcome. Who knows if that will ever happen. One of my goals for this year is to be more social. And hanging out with people that are techie like me would be good for me. Maybe after I’ve been around longer, I’ll get some invites.

My project managers are great too. With my lack of self confidence (I’m working on that … it’s another of my goals for this year), I tend to feel silly when I ask questions or feel like I don’t do the work fast enough or apologize for asking questions. But they’ve been telling me that I’ve been doing a good job. That’s a really good feeling. I had that a little bit at my last job, but not as much as I’m getting here (and I’ve only been there a month). It’s good for me (and my very fragile ego). I just need to learn to accept the praise and not feel like I’m a screw up waiting to happen.

There are some pretty good looking guys working around the place too. I’m not gonna go into details as to who and where since there are possibly people from the office who will read this (since I push updates to Twitter). It was bad enough in high school that the ENTIRE school knew who I had a crush on. I don’t need that happening at work. And just ‘cuz I think they’re “easy on the eyes” doesn’t mean there’s any more to it than that.

The Work
I haven’t gotten a whole lot of work yet, but I have gotten a few tasks. I’ve worked on some landing pages, changes to an email campaign, and setting up pages for brochure request forms. I’ve also been told that I will probably be working on some Expression Engine sites as well. So far, everything has been basic html and css. They have a custom CMS for the website that I’ve been working on. I haven’t gotten to work with php, and I don’t know that I will. I miss it. Yeah … that makes me a geek, I know. But that’s me. I don’t know what the rest of my time there will entail, but I’m looking forward to it.

What IS taking some getting used to is the processes for how things are done. Where I was last, we would publish changes for a task after we were finished with them. Even when there were more than 2 of us, the development process was pretty “causal”. Where I am now, they have more of a procedure for doing things. They have code releases and do branching off of SVN and do unit testing and have QA people. I’ve never worked in a situation like that before. It’s definitely a good thing … just something that I need to get use to. After working as part of a 2 person team for a little over a year, I’m used to doing a lot of stuff myself. And we didn’t have the resources to do a lot of that QA stuff.

The Future
I don’t know what the future holds. I’m working a contract position that is to last 3 months. That brings me to March (or so). Yeah, there is the chance that it could turn into a permanent position, but I don’t know how much of a chance that is. It just depends on how much work they have and if they’ve been happy with my work.

I did have a dream a week or so ago about things. I was talking to someone at work and made the comment that I’d only be there for a couple more months. Then Mark said that he was writing a proposal to keep me on permanently. It would be nice if that dream came true … that they wanted to keep me on. I just have to keep my chin up, work as hard as I can, and make as good an impression as possible. The rest will take care of itself if it’s meant to be.

I did end up following that path. I went to the University of North Dakota to pursue a degree in Meteorology. I spent 4 years there and ended up with a B.S. in Meteorological Studies (That was 10 years ago this May. Wow does time fly). A couple summers before I graduated, I worked on a weather modification project in western North Dakota. I loved that. I was genuinely interested in the field. I find it amazing that you can reduce the size of hail or make it rain. After college, I got a job as a meteorologist at a company in the field of weather modification. They had projects all around the world, not just in the US. I was there for over 4 years.

That job is what started my migration away from the weather related career path. I was there for over 4 years, but basically was only an office assistant. I did get to go out in the field once (to Oklahoma). But there wasn’t any weather during the week that I was there. So my job mainly entailed gathering paperwork from the field projects, compiling reports, generating reports, logging data … that kind of stuff. Nothing dealing with the weather.

But that job did get me started on my current career path. While I was there, I took over maintenance and development on the company’s website. I did have a couple computer classes in college … 2 in C programming and 1 in computer concepts in meteorology. It was the computer concepts class that I got my first taste of web design/programming. We had to do all of our reports as a website. But other than that, I’ve had no formal education/training in web design/programming. Everything that I know is stuff that I’ve taught myself through trial and error. Good thing I’m a quick learner.

So working on that company’s website is what started pulling me into the world wide web (so to speak ). I delved deeper by developing websites for myself and for a local country band that I know. I ended up registering a domain name and having several subdomains.

That brings me back to today. I have been working as a web programmer for almost 4 years now (the end of June brings me to the 4 year mark). I’ve been with the same company (sort of) all that time. I say “sort of” because at the beginning of this year, that company ceased to exist, and the 2 of us left are now working for the client we had been working. So I’ve been working on the same websites all that time (Well, almost all that time. I started on small projects/updates for the first couple months.).

In these past 4 years, I’ve expanded on my php programming skills and learned mssql. I had only worked with MySQL before that time. And this week I started working on creating my first web service. We’re integrating our shopping cart with Google Checkout, and I get to do the development. I’m learning more and more with every new project we embark on. This web service development is allowing me to learn to work with DOM objects and create/parse XML. This is stuff that I can use on my own websites too. I just need to come up with some good ideas.

While I never imagined I’d be where I am today, I am happy. I really enjoy web development. And the more time I spend on it, the better I get at it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still am intrigued by the weather … especially severe storms. One of my dream vacations would be to go on a storm chasing tour. But as for a career … it just wasn’t meant to be.

Where will I be 10 years from now? Who knows. But I’m hoping it will be in a career that has something to do with web programming.